In small business, things happen. You are in a resource constrained environment. Not enough of the three key resources (Time, Money and Skill).

I’m sure you’ve had a time when your business system (and life) is stressed and you are running hard. You are at 110% of capacity. It’s thrilling and BANG something breaks and you are limping.

Often after you’ve scrambled and fixed the problem and eliminated the constraint you should look back. Identify the root cause. In my experience, we often didn’t have redundancy of some mission critical resource.

I recently had a situation where I had One Skilled XYZ (I’m not naming them) business resource. The business decided to refocus and eliminate that service offering and I was “Up a Creek”. I knew I needed another resource months earlier but I never got around to identifying and testing a second resource.

You know it. Inevitably, a situation came up and Bang we were stressed.

To avoid this, ask yourself where is your critical, business damaging, constraint: Money, Equipment, Skills, Time or other. How can you add redundancy to each area so you don’t have emergencies come up.

The Navy SEALS have a saying “One is None. Two is One”. Things happen but you have a responsibility to not be victimized by “Things”.

Have two of any mission critical resource.

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learnedone-bad-number/feed/0Lessons Learned #6 Time is Importanthttps://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-6-time-important/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-6-time-important/#respondThu, 10 Apr 2014 16:01:31 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2890Read More]]>Is this a good time for you?

I was taught that this is a great first question to ask on any phone call I originate.

People are busy and distracted. If they can’t focus on our conversation or work, we will be less productive.

I recently became more sensitive to looking at Time of Day (TOD), Day of Week (DOW), and Week of Month (WOM) in seeking better performance in marketing systems.

You know I frequently look at my effectiveness triangle ….

Often I’m looking at the People Dimension (my ideal customer “avatars”) or the Message Dimension to figure out how we can squeeze out a bit more performance.

Now I’m more sensitive to the “TIME” dimension. It seems like a valuable reminder for all of us.

In the thingCHARGER crowdfunding campaign, our contributors followed certain patterns.

I saw this… Day of week:

Take our high day 18.4% of orders. Take our low day 11.0% The Day accounted for 7.4 % difference. That is a 70 % change and potential improvement by varying the day of week!

thingCHARGER is a Tuesday to Friday business. Those are it’s best buying times. These should be our best advertising and emailing times.

I often see Monday to Friday businesses and weekend businesses. Others are driven off life events or calender events.

So day of week is a 60% factor and Time of day is a 1000% factor. That seems like something good to know.

You see from this that a phone/tablet wall charger seems like a good idea to people between 2 PM and midnight (when they have 2 bars on their phone battery) and from midnight to 4 am (lots of things seem like a good idea then which is another story. Many aren’t.).

If we followed conventional wisdom of email first thing in the morning or 9 AM or 11 AM, we wouldn’t be connecting with our people within our buying strike zone. My suggestion for you is “Find your Truth”.

This reminds me of a great Farside cartoon…

The caption on it is “Einstein discovers that time is actually money.”

My suggestion to you is to identify your best Time of Day, Day of Week, Week of Month for your business and warm up engagement then. Advertise then, Email then, Call then.

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-6-time-important/feed/0RadioLabhttps://openspacesmarketing.com/radiolab/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/radiolab/#respondSat, 16 Nov 2013 20:50:37 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2313Read More]]>I’m a huge fan of Radiolab. They combine science, explanation, music and human interest stories in a compelling podcast. It is always performed in the familiar 3 act play format and runs 1 hour in length. The three Acts are joined by a common theme.

1. Colors
Did you know that humans have been able to see the color blue for
millions of years?

The word blue is always the last color to enter human language. Red
is the first.

Our understanding and perception of the world is related to ability
to perceive and have a word for an experience and a reason to remember
the word.

It makes me wonder what other capabilities we humans have that we haven’t exercised yet.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/

We are less aware of some fundamentals of our experience in life. I
encourage you to think differently and become more aware.

2. Blink

We blink frequently. In that millisecond, our vision goes black. But
our perception is that the world is always there. We don’t perceive
those black blink moments.

Over the course of our life, we lose 2 years to blinking yet we rarely
perceive our blink or the loss of sight for those milliseconds.

Did you know …Blinking in groups synchronizes. What is going on with blinking?

We blink to end our thinking and digest that “thought bite”.
This great podcast from NYC’s Radiolab

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91925-blink/

What is my business purpose in sharing this to you?
There are some fundamentals of the world we live in which we are
unaware of. If we become aware, we might be able to be more effective.

3. Cities
The pace of people in cities differs. The pace with which we
talk, walk and much more is related to the size of the city we live in.

We adopt a rhythm of walking, talking based on our city.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91732-cities/

4. Emergence
Fireflies flash their yellow light. In some places, fireflies
synchronize their blinks. Without communicating and without a leader.

Ants are amazing. They individually are very stupid. Collectively
they are highly effective.
Why?
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91500-emergence

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/radiolab/feed/0Lessons Learned #5 Its Easier to Keep Customers/Clients/Patientshttps://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-5-easier-customersclientspatients/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-5-easier-customersclientspatients/#respondTue, 16 Jul 2013 18:21:03 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2157Read More]]>It is easier to keep and grow customers than get new ones. It is more profitable to grow customers than acquire new ones. Funny that we hear that and don’t really give it the consideration is merits.

Why is this? Let’s look at what is involved in getting a new customer…

We must understand their Need.

We must come up with a Traffic Strategy so they know us.

We must get their Attention, engagement with great content/copy.

We must showcase our Skill. Show our skill/product/service meets their need. Then If they Trust us, they will Buy.

By contrast, lets look at existing customers…

They must have a Need.

We must show our Skill/Product/Service meets their need.

Then If they Trust us, they will Buy.

It is easier to sell something the second time than the first.

Why are so many businesses focused on the first sale?

We

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-5-easier-customersclientspatients/feed/0Lessons Learned #4 It Matters More What Other People Sayhttps://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-4-matters-people/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-4-matters-people/#respondTue, 16 Jul 2013 18:06:41 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2154Social Proof or other people’s opinion of your skill, effectiveness or product value matters more than what we say about our products.

A common opportunity business owners miss is not thinking about what their customers will say about them or their products/services.

All the successful businesses I’ve worked with have benefited from Great Copy. It is the most under appreciated element in Marketing by business owners and the hardest to get right.

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-3-great-content-rules/feed/0Lessons Learned #2 Plans and Executionhttps://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-2-plans-execution/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-2-plans-execution/#respondTue, 16 Jul 2013 17:56:54 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2149Read More]]>Its funny that the Human Mind works. Once you can picture something in detail, you can manipulate the idea and figure out how to build it. I think we are builders at heart. But to build we need to picture the completed work in mind.

Sales and Marketing systems are an interesting combination of psychology and technology. They are often times hard to picture. What has been working for us for 5 years is planning and building Sales & Marketing Systems using a technique I call “Visit the Cave”. The rules are simple:

Sustained focus without outside distractions

Illustrate processes with pictures on a white board

Implement in Infusionsoft, Websites and Project Management systems the planned system

Test the System to minimize our errors

Measure the system to see if it performs like planned

Modify as needed

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-2-plans-execution/feed/0Lessons Learned #1 Goals and Metricshttps://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-1-goals/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-1-goals/#respondTue, 16 Jul 2013 17:46:00 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2146Read More]]>As we speak with many small business owners each month about their problems/opportunities and aspirations some common themes have emerged.

Everyone wants more customers and more sales. Everyone wants more visibility for their products and services.

Few can communicate their goals.Very few can communicate their sales and marketing metrics which show how their sales and marketing system is operating.

It seems odd that Goal definition and metrics which show progress towards the goals is not in focus.

]]>https://openspacesmarketing.com/lessons-learned-1-goals/feed/0Small Business Marketinghttps://openspacesmarketing.com/small-business-marketing-2/
https://openspacesmarketing.com/small-business-marketing-2/#respondMon, 01 Jul 2013 20:53:37 +0000https://openspacesmarketing.com/?p=2080Read More]]>Are you a small business owner who wants an effective marketing system which attracts more of the right clients,patients or customers?

We have a step by step system which walks through the planning and building of an effective marketing system. This video walks through the essentials of how to build a marketing system which will work.

Want More Clients, Patients or Customers Automatically?

We help small business owners grow their business by using websites, email, video and other technologies. We excel at developing and deploying effective marketing systems which serve your business with qualified leads. We are knowledgeable in the technologies but more importantly, knowing how to put together an effective lead generating, lead nurturing sales system.

There is a new style of new marketing and sales which is successful being used by over 10,000 small businesses.
These are the basics…
Your lead generating and sales/marketing system is a system. You need to map out the processes.

There are distinctive stages and activities/tactics in each stage…We know, can recommend or execute tactics to support goals in each stage. It is the combination of these tactics, which is an effective marketing system.

We map out your current processes, suggest better processes and design a plan to get more customers. We can implement that plan along with the business several ways:
1) We plan and We do it all
2) We plan and you and your team executes
3) We plan and outside team executes

The important thing to note is there is a path to success being used by many small businesses.

How do we help grow a your business?

1. Analyze & Plan- We map out your current/sales marketing system and or your ideal marketing system
2. Execute the Plan- You have the option of us doing everything or you and your team doing the build
3. Measure & Test Results- We establish a Juicedmetrics account and follow your system performance & suggest changes

Solving your marketing puzzle is our specialty!

You must know the answers to these questions to develop an effective marketing system…

1. Who are your best prospects?
2. How do they come to an awareness of need?
3. What problem do you solve?
4. Why you? Why should they do business with you?

Based upon this information, and more second level information, we can create a system which delivers to you great prospects interested in your services and products.

We know the techniques, the technologies and how to use them to get you more clients and grow your business.

Would you like to serve people with valuable information, automatically to improve your sales results? Fill out the form below to learn more.

We are experts at designing and implementing Infusionsoft based marketing systems.